


The Salem War

by chickengun99



Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Prequel to another fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-08-18 19:04:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16522859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chickengun99/pseuds/chickengun99
Summary: When Ruby Rose was twenty years old, her team killed the queen of the Grimm. This is the story of how that came to pass.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again! If you're here from Scatterer, you should have a good idea of what's going on, but if not, you'll need some explanation. Between volumes four and five, I began writing a RWBY/Worm crossover taking place several months after Salem's death, wherein Ruby was transported to Earth Bet and had to find her way back. That's still ongoing (and will be for... a significant amount of time), but volumes of RWBY are continuing to come out in the meantime. Volume five actually lined up fairly well with what I had planned for the intervening period, but Volume six is going in a completely different direction. I'm now writing this, partially to help me keep my own timeline straight, and partially to show my audience what is and isn't canon to my own story. I'm writing this as a sort of mini-NaNoWriMo project, aiming for 30,000 words in the month of November, and staggering releases to perhaps twice a week.
> 
> This picks up near the end of Volume Five, with a few key changes - Vernal is the Spring Maiden instead of Raven, and Cinder has no idea where they are. There are many other differences, some of which you're about to see, but otherwise, the broad strokes are very similar to Volume 5.
> 
> To clarify, this is not a fix-fic. I'll admit to having some minor issues with RWBY's writing, but I'm perfectly happy with how its story is playing out. If you haven't read (and don't want to read) the fic that this is a sequel to, then you can treat this as simply an alternate take on canon. Neither fic will be required reading for the other - they should both function as independent stories.
> 
> Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy!

**Chapter One**

**52 Months until Crossover**

**Haven Academy**

Until the explosions started, this had been a pretty fun night. Lionheart had been acting sketchy and nervous, but that wasn't unusual for him. Then the whole school had shaken as  _something_  blasted its way through what was, according to Ruby's ears, the exterior wall of Lionheart's office, and we had all started running, the headmaster himself hanging back in what looked to me like raw terror.

Whatever, we'd figure out what was up with him after.

The door was locked, but I, assuming the office was probably irrecoverable in the other side, (and totally not just ignoring the possible collateral damage), blasted a hole through it with a single shotgun-enhanced punch and dived through the new hole in the door. I rolled, coming to my feet in a guard that fell apart as soon as I saw the damage.

The entire wall was  _gone_ , fire from the explosion burning everywhere I looked and dangerously close to escaping the room and reaching the neighboring rooms. A second hole, torn through the upper half of the wall to my right, looked to have blasted through into an elevator shaft, with scorch marks heading down. Ruby joined me as I watched the area, and I heard Weiss and Team JNPR coming up behind her.

A gunshot echoed, followed by shouting and return fire. I jumped with the first one, but the return fire was muffled enough to give away its location on the opposite side of the building. Before I had even figured out what was going on though, Ruby was already turning and shouting back through the gap - "Jaune, Nora, Ren, find out what's going on and see if you can stop the fighting! If this is Cinder, then that might be White Fang backup. Weiss, you come with us, we might need your glyphs!"

The building shook again, this shockwave seeming to come from far, far beneath us, down inside the mountain. A rush of heat came up the shaft a moment afterword.

Ruby jumped up onto the ledge, looking down into the shaft in a way that should have terrified any normal older sister but was a downright weekly occurrence for us. The rest of the door came down, and Qrow pulled his sword out of the pile of rubble before joining us, Weiss strutting carefully over the rubble after him. Oscar-slash-Ozpin, however, was nowhere to be seen.

"Where's the wizard?" I asked.

Qrow responded, "Ozpin's dealing with Lionheart, he'll join us once he's done."

He was doing that  _now_? We were about to go up against a Maiden, one of the strongest people on the planet, and now he was leaving us behind. Fantastic.

Yet another shockwave, the biggest one yet, seemed to make the entire mountain shake underneath us. The fighting outside seemed to pause for a second, then start right back where it left off. Ruby was the one to say what we were thinking - "We don't have time to wait for him, we need to move before Cinder brings the whole mountain down."

Weiss looked toward Qrow, who was looking down the hole himself as if trying to see what was happening. "Could she do that? Are the Maidens honestly that powerful?"

He looked up, and though nobody else aside from Ruby would have noticed it, I could see the worry on his face. "I don't know. Amber couldn't, but she was new to the job."

"It doesn't matter." Ruby's voice had that note of determination that worried me to the same level that someone else might've had while seeing their family standing on that ledge. Dad had always said she was too much like Summer for her own good, and it was these moments where I could see what he meant. "Cinder's going after the Relic, and from the sound of things, she's blowing right through all the defenses protecting it. We need to get down there."

Qrow and I exchanged a glance, but I still stepped up. Ruby was a little too comfortable with risking her life for either of us to be comfortable, but she wasn't wrong. Qrow transformed - and holy crap was that still freaky - and started nosediving as the three of us stepped over the ledge.

It didn't take long for me to notice that this hole was way deeper than I thought it was. I kept my eyes open so I didn't hit the ground unprepared, but it still took a solid twenty seconds before I saw the bottom of the shaft. I fired Ember Celica forward and down to push me toward the wall, then raised my Atlesian prosthetic and slammed it into the side, burying it up to the wrist and using it to slow my descent. Beneath me, Ruby used her Semblance to take the fall, Qrow turned back into his human form, and Weiss hit one of her glyphs at full speed, stopping in an instant as the force of her impact  _rippled_  out through the ground under the glyph.

Show-off. It was good to have her back.

The damage ahead of us was incredible. The ceiling must've been a hundred feet in the air, the entire, enormous room outlined in shades of blue and black, but fires raged everywhere. The smoking remains of automated turrets and even a couple of Atlesian spider-mechs smoking in the middle. A fifteen-foot hole was burned through the middle of a side wall, forty feet in the air and ten feet thick.

On the bright side, her trail was super easy to follow.

We climbed up through the wall as fast as we could and found yet more wreckage on the opposite side. This time, it seemed as though the walls themselves were Cinder's target, and from the looks of things she had even switched to using lightning and ice attacks. This room was way less ostentatious, and there weren't any more obvious barriers. Cinder had kept attacking the walls as she moved through though, and every once in a while, as we ran past, I caught glimpses of machinery struggling to move. Hidden defenses?

A flash of light caught our attention up ahead, at the far end of the seemingly-endless hallway. It was punctuated a second later by a shockwave that nearly blew us off our feet as we ran and a wave of cold sweeping down the hallway in its wake that actually did. Whatever she was doing, we were at serious risk of getting hurt just from the collateral. I thought I could hear screaming from that general direction, though what she had to scream about I had no idea.

We picked ourselves up and started running even faster, everyone but Ruby tapping into their second or third winds. We had to get there, had to stop what she was doing, or Salem would-

We stumbled into the final chamber, a room the size of a small office building that had been absolutely shredded by elemental attacks of all varieties - but there was no crazed Maiden to greet us. We looked down, at the base of the three-story high tiered structure that dominated the center of the room, and saw a broken body lying folded over a stair. Cinder's dress was shredded, and the hole in her torso was proof enough that she was about as dead as you could get. I hadn't expected the Grimm arm, but then I also hadn't really been expecting to live this long after going inside, either.

We had all stopped, frozen in shock, and I was the first one to partially recover. "What… what the hell happened?"

I looked to Qrow, hoping he would have some kind of answer for me, but he wasn't looking at the body. He was looking at the room's center, where a cube made entirely out of shimmering black Dust had been blown apart in the fighting.

I couldn't figure out what he was doing, but Weiss did. "The Relic. It was in there, wasn't it?"

He dropped his sword, and as I heard Ozpin and JNPR's footsteps running up to join us Qrow pulled out his flask and chugged the rest of its contents in one go. "Yeah. Yeah, it was."

-

"Yang? Yang, wake up."

I groaned, wanting nothing more than to curl back up into the warm, fuzzy comfort of the blanket. Say what you will about Atlas, they know how to keep a person warm.

"Yang. I will get a bucket of water. Don't think I'm joking. We're almost there, Ozpin wants to talk to us."

Hearing Ozpin's name woke me up the rest of the way. I sat up, stretching my good arm, and blinked the sleep out of my eyes as I looked up at the speaker. "Are we there yet?"

Blake rolled her eyes. "We will be in twenty minutes, and Ozpin's being pretty insistent. Come on, let's go."

Ugh, of course, he was. I wished I could complain about it, but then it sounded like an opportunity to get some information out of him for a change. I rolled out of my bed, glanced out the window at the rapidly approaching Solitas coastline, and followed Blake out the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Normally, I'd put the Author's Note down here, but I already said most of what I wanted to up above. Again though, thank you for reading! Next chapter probably on either Tuesday or Wednesday.
> 
> Actually, a question for those with experience doing things like this: should I make this into a series with Scatterer? I don't want to accidentally imply that you have to read one to understand the other, but I also want to make it obvious that the two are connected.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

**46 Months until Crossover**

**Off the coast of Solitas**

"To think that I went through so much trouble to find you, only to have you to deliver yourself to me."

"This isn't what's right for the Faunus!"

"You can't stop us."

"You're right. I can't stop you. Not by myself."

"Miss Belladonna, Miss Xiao-Long, thank you for joining us."

I could have done without the tone, but I made sure to school my reaction. Yang looked like she was about to pop, but Ozpin either didn't notice or, more likely, chose to ignore it.

He continued, "As you all know, we are about to enter the Kingdom of Atlas. James Ironwood is a trusted friend of mine, and he'll take us in, at least for the moment. However, we must still be wary - he is not the only man with influence in this city, and Jacques Schnee would most likely be exceedingly unhappy to learn we have arrived once he learns that we have his daughter."

Weiss, seated by the window to Ozpin's left, shifted uncomfortably but nodded in agreement. I shared her sentiment - the longer we could go without encountering her father, the better.

"Jacques will no doubt learn of our arrival soon after we land, and could very likely have men intercept us before we have left the airship dock." I saw the doubt in some of the other's eyes, Jaune in particular, but I knew better. "He carries nearly as much political power as Ironwood does, and would happily have every one of us imprisoned if it suited him. I think we can all agree that it would be best if this did not come to pass - regardless of how easily we believe we might escape."

He said that last part while looking directly at a quickly-deflating Nora. She perked back up with a 'harrumph' and spun in her seat, twisting sideways and sitting with her back to Ren's side.

I spoke up asking, "I take it you have a plan to avoid all of that?" For someone who hid as much information as he did, he seemed to love his grand reveals. I'd learned that facilitating that tendency was often an easy way to get him to give up more information.

He nodded. "Indeed I do, Miss Belladonna. Jacques' men won't catch us at the dock because we won't arrive there. Once we reach the mainland, we will exit the ship from the air and make our way to the city on foot."

That caused a well-deserved uproar. Yang and Jaune were both trying to shout over one another, Qrow was giving the boy an incredulous look, and even Ruby looked disturbed.

"On foot! Do you have any idea how cold it is out there?"

"Atlas is on top of a mountain in the middle of a blizzard, not even the Grimm can make it up there in one piece!"

"Oz, are you sure about this?"

"Quiet!" That last one was Weiss, and the whole room obeyed in an instant. "Quiet. Ozpin, with all due respect, we won't survive a trek through Solitas at this time of year. We're barely past the coldest part of the year, the temperature will be well below freezing more often than not, and there's an entire mountain range between us and the city. There aren't many Grimm, but that won't matter if the cold kills us first."

Ozpin nodded, "We will encounter an escort from Ironwood's forces after we land, they will ensure our safety once they arrive."

Weiss' eyes narrowed, but Yang beat her to the punch. "Why didn't you say that before?"

Ozpin responded, "Perhaps because I assumed the rest of you would trust me to have a plan. Believe it or not, this is not my first visit to Atlas in the winter. I am well aware of the weather patterns."

"Oz-" Qrow started, but he was cut off by Weiss speaking over him.

"How long after we land?"

That gave the old man pause, Weiss seemed to be onto something. I would admit to a little satisfaction at seeing him outwitted for once. "As soon as they find us. I will contact James as soon as we land to give him our position, and he will send out the escort."

Send out the escort? Jaune realized the implications of that phrasing at the same time I did. "The escort isn't even waiting for us. Of course, I don't know what I expecte-"

Ozpin cut him off. "Do you want Mr. Schnee to learn we're arriving? If the escort was sent out ahead of time, he would learn of it and, through it, us. Now, the sooner we leave, the sooner we can get to Atlas. Get your things together - we won't be coming back to retrieve anything we leave behind."

With that, Ozpin's Aura flashed green, as he surrendered control of the body to the other person in that head. Oscar stumbled a bit with the unexpected transition but recovered nicely, a testament to the effectiveness of his expedited Huntsman training. He looked around at the looks he was getting from the gathered group, ranging from Jaune's glare to Ruby's pitiful expression to Yang stomping off, and winced a little.

I felt bad for the kid. This situation wasn't his fault, and I knew better than most how hard it was for people to divorce their feelings towards a person from that person's appearance. I couldn't ignore the rest of the situation, though. In some unknown amount of time, Oscar would be absorbed into Ozpin's… gestalt, and then I didn't know what would happen. Ozpin hadn't exactly given away many details, as usual.

Oscar watched as people began filing out of the room, following Ruby in particular, then spun around and began walking back toward his cabin. I caught him whispering in angry tones to Ozpin's voice in his head, and against my better judgment decided to listen in.

"Why do you keep doing this?" There was a pause while he listened to a response that even my ears couldn't pick up. "You're making everyone hate you, and it's reflecting on me, too." Another pause. "Sure it's safer, but you can trust them! Do you really think Ruby would ever-" Listening to someone get cut off by something you couldn't hear was an odd experience. "If that's true, then I can't exactly help it."

Before he spoke again, the door to his room slammed shut, cutting off my chance to hear him. Everyone else had cleared out, and I followed suit. Like it or not, he knew things that we needed if we were to fight Salem, and that meant he was in charge.

As I began packing my things, I pondered whether he kept his secrets only so that he wouldn't have to fight Salem by himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shorter chapter this time. Most of them are probably going to be closer to this length than chapter one, but it'll probably vary some. We've skipped a few months ahead, and that'll be a common thing here - we've got over four years to cover in 30 chapters, after all. There will be chains of interconnected chapters, but it's almost going to read more like an anthology than anything else.
> 
> Regarding NaNoWriMo... yeah that didn't happen lol. I wound up just shy of 14k, which isn't bad, but also a long way from the 30k that I was hoping for. I also didn't end up getting chapters posted like I said I would, and I apologize for that. Like I said on my profile and on Scatterer, I'm probably going to try for a bi-weekly release on both stories, with alternating posts of either one on each weekend. I've got enough of a backlog on this story to last through mid-January on that schedule, so it should stay true for a while.
> 
> Anyway, thank you for reading and any critique you decide to offer, and I'll see you next time!


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

**Same Day**

**14,000 feet over the Mantle Plateau**

I used to be scared of heights.

Even standing on the balcony of our home’s foyer had been enough to terrify me. It was immature, maybe even cowardly, but then that was to be expected from a girl who was, at the time, no more than eleven. It hadn’t lasted long, at any rate. After all, it wouldn’t do for an heiress to have that kind of weakness.

My father had set up a protective cushion on the lower floor, then ordered one of his men to throw me off the balcony. Repeatedly. Eventually, the fall became routine, and my fear vanished just like everything else my father had deemed unfit after Winter had escaped. 

I found myself unconsciously tapping into that routine now. It wasn’t an uncommon occurrence, as much as I hated it. I often found myself with no other means of seeing the world, so I defaulted back to what he had tried to teach me.

Therefore, presented with the situation of needing to jump out of a moving airship several miles above the ground, I fell back to the mindset I had been in after the tenth time off the balcony. Acceptance. _Complacency._

I _despised_ that feeling.

“Alright team Ruby, let’s roll!” Ruby’s voice snapped me back to reality as she dove headfirst out the window of our cabin, a long trail of rose petals following her. Her whoop of excitement was stolen from her in an instant as she entered the wind. Yang followed her within seconds, and after an exchanged look and shrug with Blake, I followed as well. I had grown to expect this kind of behavior, even if I would never admit to enjoying it. No one could call me complacent now.

The wind was even worse than I’d expected. Within seconds, the airship was out of sight, and I was falling several dozen feet per second. We’d been flying between cloud layers, and within twenty seconds I had to form a defensive glyph between myself and the ground, not to protect me from the landing but instead to protect me from the rush of cold moisture that would have frozen me solid when we reached the ground.

As I cursed the wasted power, I fell through the bottom of the cloud, appearing in the midst of a snowstorm and seeing the ground over a mile beneath me. I spread my arms wide to slow my descent and give me time. Little spots of red and yellow beneath me gave away Ruby and Yang’s positions beneath me, and a glance upward showed me Blake passing through the gap I had created, diving headfirst with her arms to her sides to catch up with the rest of us.

She could get away with that, she wasn’t wearing a skirt. Heiress or not, I was still a Schnee. I needed to maintain some level of decency.

Blake shot past me within seconds, and after a few seconds of searching, I saw Oscar and team JNPR coming through the cloud layer after her after jumping from the opposite side of the ship. I didn’t see Qrow at first glance, but he’d show up eventually. After waiting for the other group to fall past me, I tucked my arms and dove after them.

As I watched, Ruby’s red spot seemed to blossom outward as she used her Semblance to take the impact. Yang began to glow red-hot as she focusing the heat her own semblance beneath her, heating and expanding the air to slow her fall - she had been entirely too pleased to discover that facet of the power. Steam rose up from the snowy ground when she impacted. The others followed suit with their own landing strategies, each making it to the ground safely.

Seconds later, as I fell past the first mountain peak, I leveled out to slow my descent. I thrust a hand out in front of me, spawning a friction glyph at an angle that I could slide down while arresting my momentum. I dropped off it, my velocity slowed enough to be safe, and dropped the last fifty feet or so to the ground.

The wind howled across the open plateau, whipping my hair into my face from the moment I landed. It wasn’t quite as cold as it could have been, but that wasn’t saying much.

“Fashionably late, princess?” Yang shouted, rubbing her hands together while keeping her Semblance active for warmth.

I rolled my eyes, struggling to tie my hair back. “I was only a few seconds behind you! Besides which, there’s no such thing!”

The others were ignoring our exchange, either because they were used to it or because they just couldn’t hear us. Nora was in the middle of yelling to Ozpin, with Ren talking into her ear. “How long until the Atlas soldiers get here?”

“Give me a moment to inform Ironwood of our presence. It should be no longer than a few minutes!” He turned, taking out his scroll, and stepped away as he held it up to his face and started shouting into it.

I turned, hunting for some sort of cover from this wind, and caught Ruby starting to dig into the snow with her weapon. It was dense enough that we could walk atop it, but it was still many feet thick. When she saw me watching, she paused, turned her back to the makeshift wall she’d created, and waved the group over. Even from here, I could see that she was breathing heavy.

Yang and Jaune both ran to help her when they saw what she was doing, and she dropped to the ground in exhaustion.

I sat down next to her as the hole got deeper and wide enough to fit the rest of us. When Ozpin, or rather Oscar got back, there wasn’t much chatter. Perhaps the group realized that it would only spark an argument, and none of us wanted to deal with a Grimm attack in this weather. 

The wind wall blocked out some of the noise, so we heard the telltale humming of Atlas’ transports before we saw the searchlights. Even in a five-foot deep hole, our group was colorful enough for them to spot us easily and they landed barely ten feet away.

Just as the entire group began picking themselves up for transport, someone new entered the pit. He stood tall, his hair and beard far messier than I would have expected but still cutting one of the most imposing figures I had ever encountered, even as he ignored me entirely. 

I wasn’t entirely sure of whether to be thankful that he was ignoring my position here, or insulted that I was being ignored. 

General James Ironwood, arguably the most powerful man in the world, dropped into our dirty hole in the snow while giving Ozpin the most frustrated look I had ever seen on someone that didn’t have to deal with team RWBY on a regular basis.

“Ozpin. Next time, how about you tell me you’re coming _before_ you nearly freeze to death in a blizzard.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dagnabit Ozpin.
> 
> As I've been writing this, I'm realizing that the pacing is...not great, to say the least. I've got at least the next three chapters, but I'm not sure if I can keep this up beyond that. I might need to re-work some things. Each chapter I've written has been getting successively worse, in my eyes, and it's getting to the point that I'm not sure I'd want to read the story myself, which I can already tell is a problem. 
> 
> Either way though, I've got this one out, and the next should be coming on December 29th or 30th, with another chapter of Scatterer in the middle. Thanks for reading, I hope you're enjoying it more than I am, and I'll see you next time!


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

**Same Day**

**Atlas Academy**

"You didn't even call him ahead of time! More than that, you didn't tell us you didn't call him! What did you expect to happen?"

My mouth moved in response without my telling it to. Just like my hand was gripping this cane and I was sitting without touching the back of the chair without intending to. This sucked, to say the least.

"I expected you to recognize the necessity of this. Had I informed him in advance, Jacques could have intercepted the message. Had I informed you, the negativity generated could have attracted the Grimm." Ozpin loved that dry, even tone. I was pretty sure it made him feel like he was more in control of the situation than he really was.

"That doesn't matter! Jacques _could_ have found out, the Grimm _could_ have come, you don't know any of that for sure!" Jaune was the one yelling, but everyone looked upset. At least, as far as I could tell without being able to turn my eyes and look at them.

My mouth responded, "You are correct, I didn't know that for sure. The chance, however, was far too great to risk. Had the Grimm found us, we would likely have been killed, and Salem's plans would have advanced even further. Had Jacques found us, Miss Schnee in particular would have been taken, which would have weakened us for the future."

"What gives you the right to decide what chances are too great? What gives you the right to decide what we get to know?" A different voice spoke up this time, shocking me to hear even as another part of me lit up with excitement at hearing it. Even Ozpin felt surprised, even though he hid it well. I could feel his emotions running through my brain, even as I felt my own at the same time, somehow distinct.

"Experience, Miss Rose. I have been alive for many, many years, and I have been fighting Salem for nearly as long. You are far from my first allies in this fight. Were we to fail here, you would not be the first ones to suffer for it. I can understand your accusations of being overly cautious, but believe me when I tell you my caution is backed by experience."

Ruby got very quiet after that.

Ozpin continued. "I have been outsmarted, outfought, betrayed, and killed more times than I can even remember. You would do well to remember that I have been cursed to battle Salem for centuries, and she is still alive despite the fact that she lacks my reincarnation abilities."

That was another reminder that I'd probably end up dead soon. Ozpin had told me about some of his past lives, and as far as I could tell, he had lasted longer than pretty much any other, and only because he'd locked himself into Beacon Academy for a few decades. I hadn't forgotten the fact that our personalities would apparently be… merged, somehow after this.

"Now, does anyone else have any questions?" No one responded even if a few didn't look happy about it. He'd talked them into submission again. "Good. Now, I have something to discuss with General Ironwood, and we will very likely be going on a mission soon after." I saw their faces change again, but they didn't seem to want to argue this time. "I don't recommend you get too comfortable."

With that, he walked me out the door, closing it behind us. I had kind of stopped talking so much when I didn't have control, but I spoke up this time. _"I wish you wouldn't do that kind of thing."_

Contrary to my usual reaction to hearing a weird voice in my head, Ozpin didn't so much as blink. "And what kind of thing is that?"

_"Get the others mad at us. They have a point, why couldn't we just-"_

He cut me off, which was impressive considering I didn't even have a mouth. "You heard that discussion the same way I did, you know what my response will be. You are a special case - you'll find out anyway eventually, and it would be difficult to conceal these things even if I wanted to."

We'd had this conversation before. I had a responsibility to keep his secrets for him, yadda yadda. I'd thought about telling the others before, but I knew he would just take control of my body if I tried.

What had happened to my life in the past few months?

_"Can you at least tell me what the mission's going to be?"_

He considered that for a minute as we stepped into the main hallway. "Not here," he whispered under his breath, keeping an eye on a pair of soldiers walking down the hallway as they gave us weird looks.

He turned and began walking in the general direction of Ironwood's office, not looking behind him. I could hear the soldiers following us, though.

_"You hear them, right?"_ I didn't want to get thrown out of the building because they thought we were supposed to be here. Especially because I was pretty sure we _weren't_ supposed to be here.

Instead of talking where they would notice, he just kept walking. He locked my eyes on a specific door down the hall - Ironwood's office, I guessed.

"Young man, can I ask what you're doing here?" One of them asked, in a voice that even I could tell was trying to sound nicer than it actually was.

Ozpin totally ignored them, suddenly turning towards Ironwood's office and knocking on the door. The soldiers behind us started running and shouting, "Kid! Stay out of there, that's-"

He was cut off by the door opening, and the man himself stepping out. Ozpin looked up, which must've been an odd feeling for him since I only came up to the man's chest in height. Ironwood took in the situation in an instant and spoke before his soldiers could even come to attention.

"Corporal Russell, Sergeant Riviera. No need to be alarmed. Oscar here is a prospective Academy student, I asked him to come here." He must have come up with that on the spot. I was a little impressed. "Return to your duties, soldiers."

"Yes, sir!" They turned and walked away, but not before giving me some weird looks. Ironwood stepped out of Ozpin's way as he walking into the office, shutting and locking the door behind us.

"Ozpin."

"James."

Ironwood paused. "What happened, Ozpin? Last I heard, you got killed during the fall of Beacon, then the Wyvern got frozen to the side of the Beacon CCT in a big silver flash that has yet to be explained. Next thing I hear, my specialists have found Amber's corpse inside a severely damaged, albeit apparently used Aura transfer pod, right after finding _your_ corpse sitting outside it, while your candidate for inheriting the power apparently vanished sometime during the fighting. I need information, and I need it now. I notice that Pyrrha Nikos doesn't seem to be with you, so I assume she doesn't have the power?"

Ozpin nodded. "To my understanding, Ms. Nikos was sadly killed in action shortly after my own death." It was amazing how matter-of-factly he said that, like him dying was something that happened every other week. Fantastic. "The Maiden's power was lost to the original attacker, one now-deceased Cinder Fall. Unfortunately, I do not know who inherited the power after her death."

He was being weirdly forthcoming with him. In my experience, that usually meant he was lying, or at least not telling the whole truth. _"You know who it is, don't you?"_

Ironwood took that in, took a deep breath, and slammed his hand against the desk hard enough to leave an imprint. "What killed her? You?"

"I'm afraid not. Cinder was killed by an as-yet-unknown assailant while trying to access the Relic of Knowledge. I have suspicions as to who her opponent might have been, but I don't know for sure. More important is the fact that the assailant took the Relic with them when they vanished." Ironwood stood with a start, pushing his chair backward as he did so, and began pacing behind his desk. Ozpin continued, "We may have lost access to it, but thankfully, Salem likely has as little idea where it is as we do. For now, we should focus on securing what power we still can."

Yeah, he totally knew who it was. _"You're going to tell me who it is later, right?"_ I hoped so. Ozpin's lies were annoying enough when I did know everything.

Ironwood paused and turned to face us. "You want to find Eira." Who?

Ozpin nodded. "Along with the others. Fall and Spring are missing, but it should be possible to find Summer as well. I presume Atlas' Relic is still locked safely away as well?"

"It's in the vault, right where it should be. I couldn't tell you where Eira is, though - you know how she is."

Ozpin chuckled. "I do, yes. Anything you can tell me would be useful, however. If we can narrow it down, then the team I brought with me can track her down and, hopefully, bring her back."

"Fine. I'll give you what I know, but don't expect her to do what you ask." Ironwood seated himself at his desk and began typing.

I felt Ozpin smile. "It won't be a problem, I assure you. If you could grant us the use of an airship and pilot, we will track her down as quickly as possible."

Ironwood nodded. "I can get you a ship tomorrow. Before that, I need more information." Hah, good luck with that, General.

"I'll tell you everything I can," my body lied through its teeth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ozpin's being a dirty rotten liar, isn't he?
> 
> Alright, so. Like I mentioned last time, I'm getting increasingly unsure about what I had planned for this story. I'm not calling it off or officially putting it into hiatus, but I can't guarantee the next chapter coming out on the 12th or 13th like I'd originally planned.
> 
> If I don't post it then, then once I finally get Scatterer moved to Spacebattles, I might start posting chapters of this out-of-order there, as I'm inspired to write them. I'd then move them over here once it wrapped up over there. That's the plan I've got right now, but it's subject to change, and if anyone has better ideas, feel free to give them to me.
> 
> Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next time! (Whenever that may be.)

**Author's Note:**

> Normally, I'd put the Author's Note down here, but I already said most of what I wanted to up above. Again though, thank you for reading! Next chapter probably on either Tuesday or Wednesday.
> 
> Actually, a question for those with experience doing things like this: should I make this into a series with Scatterer? I don't want to accidentally imply that you have to read one to understand the other, but I also want to make it obvious that the two are connected.


End file.
